Well, I accientally clicked on "send" before finishing my
last e-mail, so here's the last message I'll send out on the
subject.
What I thought I heard last year from the fleet was a concern that we didn't have that many people out racing. The concern I thought I heard was that "Wow, look we had eighteen boats at Vallejo, but gee...there's only six or seven or eight boats on the line at any of the HDA events."
I thought about it and figured that in fact, the hard core racers will probably come out and race no matter what the schedule is (within limits). That meant that my goal was to try to come up with something that would attract the occasional racers out a little more often....people like me, for example.
That's why I cooked up the "specials" schedule...you know, the Three Bridge Fiasco, the OYRA Lightship, OYRA Half Moon Bay, and Jazz Cup "schedule". I figured we could field SF Bay 30's fleets in those events, and might draw a bunch of people who didn't want to do the "regular" season. The regulars will do the "regular" season, no question there. Maybe they'll show up for the "specials", too, who knows? Unfortunately I used the words "Buoy" and "Tour", and confused a bunch of people with those words in the new context. Ah well, that's how it goes.
The fleet can continue with that philosophy, or devise a schedule that will make the hard-cores happy, and let the rest of the gang play catch-all, if they're inclined. You can build a schedule that pleases the real regulars, or you can build a schedule that perhaps doesn't completely please the regulars, but tries to draw in the people on the "fringe". If you're lucky and smart and get it right, you **might** be able to do both. That would be the very best thing for the fleet, if you can do it.
Good luck, team, and see ya in Vallejo.
Alan Received on Sun Oct 28 10:52:29 2001